Liberal senator asks if it's time for merger with NDP

VANCOUVER – If Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff fails to capture a majority of the votes cast against Conservative leader Stephen Harper, a Liberal senator tells Postmedia News it could be time for the Liberals and the NDP to discuss merging the centre left.

“I think this realization is coming along (to) a lots of parties,” Liberal Senator Larry Campbell said Tuesday in Vancouver.

“Harper is where he is because he was able to sucker the Progressive Conservatives into joining a right-wing neo-conservative party. At any given time, I believe there is 30 per cent of the vote (that) is neo-conservative. So that leaves you 70 per cent. Then you knock off a little bit for the Bloc (Quebecois). I think there is a place for a centre-left party,” Campbell said.

“Now, it will push some people to the Conservative camp. It will push some people to try to form some socialist shadow of the NDP. But at the end of the day, I think if you take the Liberal and NDP and took a look at their major points, there is a lot of agreement there,” he said.

Campbell said he feels the two parties have far more in common than the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance ever did.

“I think that Stephen Harper put a gun to the progressive party’s head and said, you either join us or we will destroy you. I firmly believe that, so they joined, under duress,” he said.

Campbell made the remarks during an interview with Postmedia News moments before his leader Michael Ignatieff urged Canadians to vote for what he calls, the only party that can be a governing alternative to Harper.

“This country has been governed from the centre for 140 years and that is why Canadians have given their confidence in the Liberal party . . . That is where we have pitch our tent, the big red tent, since the beginning of time — not me, this is (former Liberal prime minister Wilfrid) Laurier,” he said.

But more poll results are suggesting fewer Canadians want to park their ballots with the Liberals and are looking at supporting the NDP.

In British Columbia, Campbell admitted the bandwagon effect of those polls — which he believes are “crap” — could throw some three-way races to the Conservative’s side.

Former B.C. premier and federal Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh is in a tough fight in his riding of Vancouver South.

He said he is concerned strategic voting and the NDP support might bleed some votes from the Liberals but he hoped his reputation might buck the trend.

“I think yeah . . . It may,” Dosanjh said Tuesday. “(But) I think ultimately, people will make judgments, both in terms of the national voting and in terms of (a) local candidate. I think that sometimes, (the) local candidates are worth three or four or five, 10 per cent of the vote,” he said.

Although Ignatieff suggested Harper should be defeated at all cost, he refused to throw his support behind strategic voting.

“Should they (vote strategically)?” Ignatieff asked. “That is not for me to say. They will vote strategically, that’s what Canadians do. They have choices.”

Ignatieff also refused to entertain the possibility he might be forced by play second-fiddle to Layton when the votes are tallied up on Monday.

“Have I given the thought to if my aunt had a lower voice, would she be my uncle? You know, I mean, look . . . I’m fighting to win a federal election,” Ignatieff answered.

The Liberal leader told reporters the real reason he’s been pounding the pavement for the last year and half was to shore up Liberal support and to “get the base back.”

“The base is back,” Ignatieff told reporters. “We’ve had a whole operation under the radar for a very long of time to get that base out,” he said, adding he feels confident that on May 2nd, his efforts will have paid off.

But even if the party’s 800,000 supporters — those who stayed home during the last election in 2008 — show up on May 2nd, it is not clear it will be enough to throw the Tories off course or even to challenge a surge in NDP support.